


If I Don’t Let Myself Be Happy Now Then When?

by threemeows



Series: Close My Eyes and Believe [2]
Category: To All the Boys I've Loved Before Series - Jenny Han, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 15:32:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18501853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threemeows/pseuds/threemeows
Summary: If not now, thenWhen the time we have now endsContinuation of "And The Time's, Such Clumsy Time." Ski trip shenanigans.





	If I Don’t Let Myself Be Happy Now Then When?

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the Jimmy Eat World song, "For Me This is Heaven."

They eventually decide to watch some movies on Netflix, sharing Peter’s earbuds. But Lara Jean can’t really concentrate on . . . what _is_ it that they’re watching? They’ve pulled the armrest separating their seats up, so Peter’s got his back against the window, one foot on the floor. She’s resting her back against his chest, between his legs, and his arms are folded around her, hands twined on her stomach - she’s holding his phone sideways on top of his laced fingers so they can both see.  
  
But his face is by hers, just barely, and she can feel him breathing into her right ear, warm and electrifying. It’s so strange, to feel so comfortable lying against him - and yet, at the same time, feel as if she’s on the edge of some precipice, almost dizzy with nerves.  
  
It doesn’t help that sometimes, if she takes a deep breath, she can almost swear she feels his mouth against her ear.

Lara Jean bites her lip. They’ve been driving for hours. The initial buzz and excitement that had overtaken their classmates when they set off has settled – people are chattering quietly, others are on their phones or dozing. No one would see if . . .

She freezes – there it is again, his lips against her ear, breath hot and ghosting down the side of her face, her neck. Flushed, she shifts, heart thumping – turns her head, just enough. “You good?” he murmurs, and she feels his grip on her tighten slightly, just underneath her breasts.

“Yeah,” she murmurs back, eyes closed. She takes a deep breath, tries to quell the butterflies. And then comes another kiss – light, feathery, on the apple of her cheek. She sits up, turns to face him, not quite able to meet his gaze -

The bus slows suddenly, abruptly, and there’s a cheer. They’ve arrived.

“Damn it,” Peter groans, and Lara Jean blushes harder, and pulls away.

“Sorry,” she says, shouldering her backpack. He gives her a wry grin, picks up his stuff, and they wait their turn to get off of the bus.

When they climb off, Peter goes to talk with his friends, and Lara Jean waits as the driver starts unloading the luggage. She finds hers easily enough, but as she walks into the lodge’s main hall, accidentally bumps into a girl stooped over trying to adjust the straps of her own bag.

“Oh, sorry!”

“It’s okay. Cute suitcase.”

“Thanks!” Lara Jean says, straightening. It’s the new girl – Patty? – who’s now appreciatively eyeing her mint-green rolling luggage. “You’re um - ?”

“Pammy. I think we have lit together?”

“Yeah!” she nods. “You had a great presentation.”

“Thanks, yours was awesome though,” Pammy says. “ _Persuasion_ is totally the underrated Austen work of all time.”

“ _Yes!_ Don’t get me wrong, everybody loves a Darcy, but – ”

“Hey. Lara Jean! Largie! _LARGE_!”

Lara Jean turns around, sees Darrell frantically gesturing at her to come over. She points at herself, confused, and when Darrell nods, she shakes her head and turns back to Pammy to continue their conversation. Darrell isn’t as nutty as Greg, but chances are, if he wants her to come over, something’s up. But then suddenly Peter comes up beside her. “Hey, do you have a sec?”

“Yeah, sure.” To Pammy, she says, “One sec.” She follows Peter off to the side.

“Do you know the new girl?” he asks.

“No, we were just talking for the first time just now,” she says. “Why? What’s up?”

Peter rubs his chin, grinning. “Nothing’s up. Darrell just wanted to know.” Lara Jean looks blankly up at him. Peter snorts. “He wants to get to know her. You know. As in – ”

“Oh. _Ohhhh_.” And then she pauses. “So . . .?”

Peter rolls his eyes, but with affection. “Oh my god. You are impossible.”

She giggles. “So what does Darrell want me to do?” she asks, peering over Peter’s shoulder. Sensing his in, Darrell jumps into the conversation immediately.

“Just get her to go snowboarding with us.”

“You? She’s not going to go snowboarding with just you guys.”

“I meant us, like, all of us!” Darrell says, circling his finger around.

“Well that’s a problem because I don’t even know how to snowboard,” Lara Jean says, primly.  
  
“You don’t?” Peter blinks at her. “Why are you even here?”  
  
Lara Jean glares at him, half-outraged, half-dubious. He grins, and then she knows he’s joking, and she swats at him, even as he says, “Awww,” and dodges her smacks.

“D’awww,” Darrell mocks, and Peter shoves his shoulder.  
  
“Hey, man, I’m trying to help you out.” He turns to Lara Jean again. “That’s okay. I’ll teach you.”  
  
“You will?” Lara Jean smiles up at him, and maybe it’s the floaty feeling she’s getting, but she swears Peter looks kind of floaty himself right now.  
  
“Yeah, ‘course. You think I’m gonna let my girlfriend sit all alone in a hotel room?”  
  
Girlfriend. He’s said it before, in front of a lot of people before, but before it was fake. It was pretend. And now ...  
  
She scrunches her nose at him, then turns to Darrell. “All right. Wait a second.” She walks back over to Pammy. “Hey. So, the guys are all gonna go snowboarding. Wanna come?”  
  
“Huh?” Pammy looks over Lara Jean’s shoulder. “Oh! I mean - sure.” She brightens up. “Thanks. I don’t know all of them ...?”  
  
“Oh. There’s Greg - he’s back there. And the one in the red hoodie is Darrell. And that one is Peter - um, my ...” She pauses, but then she plows forward. It sounds foreign, and it sends a little thrill of happiness through her when she says it. “My boyfriend.”  
  
“Okay, cool,” Pammy agrees. “Gimme your number.” They trade phone numbers and Lara Jean agrees to text her if plans change. Then Pammy goes to find her room and Lara Jean goes back to the boys, giving Darrell two thumbs ups and an exaggerated grin.  
  
“Thatta girl!” Darrell whoops, squeezing her around the shoulders. “You’re better at this than your dude.”  
  
“What the hell, man,” Peter says, affronted. “You had to ask me to ask her.”  
  
Lara Jean giggles, then shrugs her shoulders haughtily.  
  
“Come on, we need to get ready,” Darrell says, already moving through the crowd to find their room.  
  
Peter, exasperated, rolls his eyes. “See you in an hour?” he says, stepping closer to her.  
  
Lara Jean nods. “Promise to go easy on me?” she asks, then bites her lip at the sudden softness in his eyes. She looks down, only half-way meeting his gaze through her lashes. She’d been talking about him teaching her to snowboard. But she supposes, in retrospect, she’d meant something entirely different too.  
  
He nods, and says, gentle, “Yeah.” Then he looks around. There’s still a lot of people milling around in the hall, and he hesitates. He’s not going to do it here, she realizes. Their first real kiss isn’t going to happen in public, unlike their first fake one.  
  
But she also realizes she can’t exactly wait anymore, not really, so she stands on tiptoe and gives him a light peck on the lips - soft and close-mouthed, the type of easy, common-placed, kiss you give a boy that you’ve been (fake) dating for about three months now, and might give him on any ordinary day when you say “see you later.” Peter stays close, though - rests his forehead against hers, their noses brushing. She swallows past the swirl of warmth in her chest.  
  
“See you in a few,” she says, smiling up at him nervously, before she goes to find her and Chris’s room.  
  
*  
  
Teaching Lara Jean to snowboard, Peter discovers, is a complete lost cause. One - she has no sense of balance. Two - she has no sense of direction. And three - she is also scared of her own shadow - literally, she saw her shadow and got spooked and that’s how she ended up in the snow for the fifth time that day. (“I thought it was a bunny!” “A bunny?!” “I didn’t want to run over a cute fluffy bunny!”)  
  
So, yeah, he doesn’t end up teaching Lara Jean how to snowboard. But. He’d be lying if he said it was a complete lost cause. Because almost every time she does fall, she ends up knocking him down with her, sprawled out on top of him, both of them laughing. She looks so pretty like that, snow melting in her hair and cheeks red and her giggles ringing all around him. The knowledge that he’s the one that put that smile on her face, her laughter in the air . . . well, it’s so much better than what he could’ve hoped for. The main reason he’d been afraid of telling her how he’d felt about her, face to face, was that he knew she was scared - she’d told him as much, at the diner. He’d thought if he’d told her, she’d push him away - run away. And when he’d seen her at school with Sanderson . . .  
  
Anyway. _All’s well that ends well, right?_ he thinks, watching as Lara Jean and Pammy cheer Darrell and Greg who are racing down the hill on their boards. They all laugh when Greg purposely cuts in front of Darrell, causing him to wipe out spectacularly.   
  
“So ... how long have you guys been ...?” He hears Pammy ask Lara Jean. He pretends to be engrossed with his re-strapping his boots.  
  
“Oh! Um - ah –” Lara Jean fumbles. And he doesn’t blame her. Technically, it’s been nine hours. He checks his phone. Nine hours and thirty-two minutes if he’s being completely accurate. “Oh, it’s so long I’ve forgotten.”  
  
Peter snickers.  
  
“Yooo!” They all turn to see Greg gesturing at them from the bottom of the hill. “I’m starving!”  
  
“Oh, thank god,” Pammy says. “Me too. Come on, LJ, one last go?”  
  
Lara Jean looks down the hill, looks at Peter. He grins at her. “Come on ... wimp.”  
  
She purses her lips at him, then says, resolute, “I think I will!”  
  
Pammy whoops, and the girls start slowly down the hill together, Pammy steady and keeping an even pace for Lara Jean, Lara Jean wobbly but a lot more assured than she was earlier in the day. Peter waits until they’re about half way down before he kicks off, deliberately speeding up behind Lara Jean before coming up beside her. “Boo!” he yells.  
  
Lara Jean shrieks, and tumbles over, straight into him - which, he supposes, he deserves - but it knocks the wind out of him and they end up skidding to a stop at the bottom of the hill.  
  
“You’re an asshole!” she yells, spluttering snow, as she unbuckles herself from the board.  
  
“I can’t help it! It’s too easy!” he practically cackles.  
  
“Do you enjoy making my life miserable? Is it a thing?”  
  
“Uh, duh,” he says, sticking his tongue out at her, as he unstraps his boots from his board. “Life’s purpose now.”  
  
She grabs a fistful of snow and tries to stuff it into his face, but he grabs her wrist and, with both of them struggling and laughing, pins her down into the snow.  
  
He’s still laughing and tickling her when the snowball plonks him right in the back of the neck. “ _KaVINsky_! My stomach is literally _eating itself_ here!” Greg yells.  
  
Peter sighs, rolls off of Lara Jean. She’s still giggling, her eyes alight and face red from the cold and her laughter. “Come on,” she says, nodding at the guys.  
  
“He’s a fucking spoilsport,” Peter mutters, pissed.  
  
Lara Jean turns redder. “Well, I’m starving too,” she says, lightly. She takes off her gloves and stands up. “You coming?”  
  
“Yeah, yeah.” He takes off his own gloves, picks up both their boards. She takes his free hand – notches herself into his side, as they trudge back to the lodge. During dinner, she keeps glancing his way and blushing, and he can’t help but grin to himself – especially, when, during dessert, he straddles the bench and she cuddles close and rests her head on his shoulder, as she eats her Jell-O.

So, no, not a _total_ loss.

  
*

  
A bunch of people are hanging out in Greg’s room tonight, drinking alcohol smuggled in from shampoo and soda bottles. Lara Jean swears the beer has a soapy after-taste but sips at it anyway from her cup as she watches the boys play beer pong - they’ve moved the dresser to the center of the room and put the TV on the floor.  
  
Pammy is sitting next to her on the bed, shoulder-to-shoulder with Darrell, both of them happily chatting away. Chris is in the corner with Charlie, quite literally wrapped up in each other. Other people are sitting on the floor or walking around through the room, chattering and laughing - Lucas is one of them.  
  
She keeps looking at Peter. She never saw him drunk before - of all the parties they’ve gone to when they were fake dating, he’d been the designated driver. She’d never thought to ask him if he thought he was missing out, because frankly, they were fake dating and it was his nutty idea in the first place. Now, since he doesn’t have to worry about driving, she can see the difference. He’s always been friendly and warm to everybody, but now it’s upped a notch or two. He laughs a little louder, a little fuller. His smile is a little more sloppy. He’s had quite a few beers and she wonders just how drunk he is. She can’t decide if she likes the change, exactly, but every time he catches her looking and grins at her, her insides seem to almost swell, exactly the feeling she got when she’d tumble down the hill and straight into Peter’s arms.  
  
She’s never been drunk before. She’s never been tipsy before. But she had so much fun this morning, and she’s feeling bold. Exhilarated, even. She wonders if it’s in after effect from this morning’s snowboarding session. Or if it’s something else.  
  
“So I went to their concert right before we moved here -“  
  
“Where? The one in Richmond?”  
  
“Yes! Oh my god! Were you there?” Pammy exclaims.  
  
“Yeah! Front and center. It was awesome.”  
  
“I’m so jealous! We had nosebleeds but it was still so freaking fantastic. Here, LJ, you should hear one of their sets -“ Pammy starts scrolling through her phone.  
  
Lara Jean catches eyes with Darrell. “Maybe later,” she says, smiling. “I gotta get some air.” She slides off the bed and leaves Darrell to it.  
  
She stumbles on the way to Peter - guess she had way more to drink than she thought - and impulsively wraps her arms around his waist. He puts an arm around her shoulders. “Hey,” he says, a little surprised. “What’s up?”  
  
“Nothing,” she says, smiling blearily at him. “Just wanted to give you a hug.” And then she does just that, snuggling deeper into his side.  
  
She feels him put his cup down, and then his other arm goes around her shoulders. She looks up. His eyes are a little red. She wonders just how drunk he is, again. “Wanna get some air?”  
  
She nods silently. They separate, and she twines her fingers through his - he leads her out of the room, into the hall. She’s not really sure where they’re going. There’s not too many places to go here, after all, without getting into trouble. It’s close to curfew.

 

“I dunno,” he says, when she asks. “Around.” He winks at her, and she giggles, pokes his side. “ _Ah!_ Watch it!” Which of course, makes her poke him again. “Okay, come here, you – ” He pulls at her hand, pulls her flush against him, and the surprised, playful shriek dies in her throat, as his back hits the wall. Lara Jean swallows, closes her eyes . . . because she somehow can’t look at him, at the gleam in his gaze, soft and anticipatory . . . feels his mouth against hers, light, tentative. Her fingers tighten on his shoulders, and she opens her mouth, skims her tongue against his. She shivers at the touch, and she feels like she’s drowning, and the only thing keeping her aloft is his grip on her waist.

“You okay?” he mumbles, when they break apart for air.

 _Why does he keep asking that?_ she wonders, still struggling to catch her breath.

“Yeah,” she says, tracing his lower lip with her index finger. “I – ”

“Hey. Peter.”

Lara Jean steps backwards, shocked. Peter pushes off the wall. Gen stands a few feet away, arms crossed over her chest, head tilted to the side. Beside her, Emily at least has the good grace to look embarrassed.

“Uh, hey,” Peter finally manages to get out.

Lara Jean, red-faced, looks back and forth between them.

“Gen, come on,” Emily says, pulling at her elbow.

Gen shrugs her off. “Can we talk?” she asks, short.

As Emily makes an “oooookaaaaaay” face, Lara Jean feels her chest tighten. She looks at Peter, who looks flabbergasted, to back at Gen, head still turned up to the side. Lara Jean recognizes that expression – everybody at school would . . . It's the, "Gen wants something" look. And the "Gen will get that something" look.

 _Say no,_ she thinks. All the tingly warmth she’d felt not three minutes ago is dissipating rapidly, replaced by a sudden coldness. _Say no. Say no. Say no . . ._

Peter, his hands in his jeans pockets, looks down on the floor. Heaves a big sigh, looks up at the ceiling. Then he turns to look at Lara Jean.

 _Shit,_ she realizes. She bites her tongue. She’s not going to cry in front of Gen. There is no way in hell she’s going to cry in front of Gen.

“Just – ” He takes her upper arm, leads her further down the hall, away from the girls, and around the corner. “Covey, just give me ten minutes. Okay? That’s all I’m asking. Just ten minutes.”

Lara Jean rolls her eyes, mostly to stop the tears from coming, and keeps her gaze on the wainscoting in the hall. “I can’t believe this,” she mutters.

“Covey. Hey. Hey. Hey, look at me – ”

“This is exactly why I didn’t want to come to this stupid trip in the first place,” she finally manages to say.

“Covey, I know what this looks like – ” He puts both hands on her shoulders, bends his knees to try and catch her gaze. “I swear to god. I’ll explain everything. Okay?”

 _You’re a pushover if you say yes,_ a nasty, horrible voice inside her head murmurs. _He’s going to walk right back to her and leave you all alone, like always . . . second best, fake best, alone . . ._

But then he licks his lips, and says, hopefully, “You gotta trust me.”

And then she remembers – the diner. And how he’d told her about his dad, how he’d just left them – left _him_ – in the dust. How she’d told him how she was scared. And how she realized, on the bus, that she wasn’t the only one.

“Don’t make me regret this,” she says, lowly. Peter straightens, nods solemnly. She holds out a pinky finger and despite himself, he laughs, rueful, and hooks his around hers. Before she goes, he kisses her forehead and hugs her tight. “Ten minutes,” she says, and heads off, past Emily and Gen – whom she refuses to look at – towards her room.

 

 

-tbc-


End file.
